Free Riders

Commuters in Washington, as in many other big cities, are often handed free tabloid newspapers nowadays. For some reason, the freebies generate more litter than ...

Commuters in Washington, as in many other big cities, are often handed free tabloid newspapers nowadays. For some reason, the freebies generate more litter than old-fashioned newspapers that cost 35 or 50 cents.

Certainly you see castaway classified and sports sections abandoned on subway floors now and again. But every day when I ride Metro I see several or even dozens of copies of the free papers left behind.

Metro provides not just garbage but newspaper recycling canisters at all its stations. Is there something about the type of people who take free papers that makes them less likely to care about their surroundings? Or is there something about the quality of the papers themselves that makes them seem less worth the bother of carrying off the train?